 Hi, my name is Sam Irvin, and welcome to Creature Features Art Gallery, where today we have all of the artwork that is in the new issue of Little Shop of Horrors, number 38, devoted to Frankenstein, the true story. We are going to show you piece by piece all of these magnificent pieces of art, and I look forward to showing it to you. I almost feel like Vincent Price and those infomercials that he did for Sears and Roebuck for the Vincent Price Art Collection, so I hope you enjoy the tour. In this display case, we have an original copy of the actual screenplay. It was shot under the title Dr. Frankenstein, and that's what appears on the cover, the script by the great Christopher Isherwood and Don Bacardi. They also published the script the month that the film aired in November of 1973. It came out in a paperback edition from Avon Books, and that was a big item for fanboys like myself back in the day. It was the screenplay. It wasn't a novelization. I don't think that had ever been done on a TV movie ever. This right here is Bazaar magazine number three with Frankenstein, the true story on the cover. That is a fanzine that I edited and published at the age of 17, and that came out in 1974. I think to date, there are exactly two magazines in history that have Frankenstein, the true story on the cover. That one, and now this one. This is the mural that Mark Maddox, the incredible Rondo-winning artist, has created for the final cover of Little Shop of Horrors 38. I couldn't be happier. It just kind of blew me away, and it is, we think, the largest magazine cover ever for a horror magazine. It's a three-panel fold-out wraparound, and it just really captures all the main characters of the movie and the whole spirit of everything. I think it's absolutely incredible, and this is the original art. It took Mark three months' work to paint this. It was on birch wood with acrylic paint, and a very lucky buyer now has that in his personal collection. For the inside front cover fold-out spread, we have this beautiful piece of art by Bruce Tim, and Bruce is very well known in the animation world for co-creating and co-producing Batman, the animated series, and many, many other DC comics animation projects, and he is sort of one of the people mainly in charge of the DC animation universe. Many of the pieces of art that he's done in the past have mainly been more caricature portraits, but he decided for this project that he was very moved by the arctic finale of the film and decided to do something much more realistic and somber, and I think it's just a wonderful piece that's so evocative of the drama of the final climax of the film. This is the original piece, and I have to check here to make sure I'm correct, he did this with copic and prism color markers, color ease and prism color pencils, and white acrylic paint. The co-screenwriter of Frankenstein the True Story is the very famous portrait artist Don Bacardi, and in the process of interviewing him for the magazine, and here's the spread right here, I got to know him well and he eventually asked if I would like to sit for one of his portraits, and I was very honored to do that. He only paints people in person, the old fashioned way, and in the sitting, he limits himself to three or four hours and he sits and paints with watercolor, freestyle, and he does it all in one session. This was the result of four sittings, and this was my favorite, and I think he did a really, really interesting job. I was just so honored to be painted by the co-writer of Frankenstein the True Story, it was pretty much a dream come true, and of course I used that as the representation for me on my introduction page in the magazine. I'm going to have to read this because it's very complicated, but when I say that he's a world-renowned portrait artist, I am not exaggerating. His portraits can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Harvard University, Princeton University, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Portrait Gallery in London, among many other major institutions, and Bacardi painted the official gubernatorial portrait of Jerry Brown that hangs in the California State Capitol Museum, so I feel like I've been immortalized by someone who's pretty much immortal. There was a scene that was actually shot for Frankenstein the True Story, when Michael Sarazan as the creature goes back to see Figaro at the opera house when he goes by himself, and by then his face has started to deteriorate, and Dr. Frankenstein really wants to keep him out of sight, and he's not sure what he's going to do with him yet, but the creature doesn't realize that people might be afraid of him or think that he's very strange-looking, and he goes, he dresses up, goes back to the opera house, and the scene that was shot that didn't make the final cut is that he ends up getting mugged behind the theater. It's a very dark alley, and these three thugs come up to him, he's got his back to them, and they think he's a rich gentleman, and they're going to rob him. They crack a bottle over his head, and then the creature turns around, he's not phased by the bottle, and when he turns around he looks kind of ugly, and they freak out and run away. It was, I actually interviewed one of the actors who played the lead thug who cracks the bottle onto the head of the creature, and I was thinking, wow, let's talk about this in the interview, and since we don't have any photographs of the scene, let's have Neil D. Vokes, who's a great graphic artist, do a drawing to representing the scene. Well, when I talked to Neil about it, he was like, wow, let's do a whole comic strip and recreate the whole scene like a comic book, and he does a lot of comic books. I was like, fantastic. So we gave him an entire page to recreate this sequence, and we call it the lost thug scene. Now just like in comic book art, he draws everything on board with black ink, and it's in black and white, but then he has a colorist who comes in and colorizes it on computer, and this is what became the full page spread in the magazine itself with all of the color. And we also had the title lettering that says, Frankenstein, the true story, the lost thug scene in a very beautiful antique type, and all of that was created and drawn by Nick Nix, who is a great artist and lettering designer. I think it turned out fantastic. The same artist, Neil D. Vokes, who did the comic strip of the lost thug scene, I also asked him to do a montage of the introduction for the profile of Hunt Stromberg Jr., who was the producer of Frankenstein, the true story. And what's really interesting about Stromberg is that he actually was a huge horror film fan from way back. He actually met Elsa Lanchester on the set of Bride of Frankenstein when he was eleven years old. She was actually starring in a movie that his father was producing at MGM at the exact same time, and she had to shuttle back and forth between MGM and Universal. But over the years, he ended up working with just about every horror star there is in the galaxy, and he produced quite a number of things. He discovered, created, and produced the Vampira show in 1954 on local television in Los Angeles and found Melanormy and turned her into Vampira and had her hosting late night horror movies, which became a huge sensation. He cast his friend Yvonne Decarlo as Lily Munster and the Munsters when he was head of programming for CBS TV. He put Vincent Price and Peter Lorre together in a pilot that never made it to the air, but he loved them. He produced a play that was headed for Broadway. He didn't quite make it there, but it had Bella Legosi, and it played in New Haven and in Boston. He worked with Karloff, and of course here's Elsa Lanchester and Bride of Frankenstein. He developed The Legend of King Kong, which ultimately did not get off the ground after Dino de la Rintz's production got in the way. He was instrumental in the development of Lost in Space, and here's the robot from that. He did a mummy movie called The Curse of King Tut's Tomb. He worked with Hitchcock. He turned Alfred Hitchcock's presence into an hour and called it the Alfred Hitchcock Hour and helped develop stories and everything for that series when he was at CBS. And of course here's a representation of Frankenstein the True Story. After Neal had done this piece of art, we discovered that Hunt had actually was one of the executives on Route 66, and they did a special episode in 1962 that brought Karloff back to wear his actual monster makeup from the original Frankenstein, and also had Lawn Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman and Peter Lorre. So I decided, you know, I would rather see Boris Karloff in his monster makeup, and since Stromberg actually had that connection, I actually had Neal do a little added piece of artwork which we put over that part, and that's what you see in the final version that's been colorized for the final piece. And the person who does the coloring is named Matt Webb, and I think he's did a brilliant job. But you can see now that the Karloff here is replaced by Karloff as the monster and Lawn Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman. So we really do have the gallery of just about every creature under the sun that had some connection to Hunt Stromberg Jr. So here we have three pieces of art by Adrian Salmon, and this was created for a spread for an essay called Queer Frankenstein that was actually written by Mark Gatiss, who's the co-creator and co-producer of Sherlock, the Benedict Cumberbatch series, and Mark also plays the role of Microsoft Holmes, Sherlock's brother in the series. And so, because he's quite recognizable, I felt that we wanted to actually see him in the spread. And so I asked the artist, why don't we have him with the magnifying glass, kind of like Sherlock Holmes, peering over the edge of the page, and that's what you see here. And then, of course, we have Michael Sarazan as the creature, and Leonard Whiting as Dr. Frankenstein, and then also Sarazan on the ship at the climax of the film. One of the things that I thought was really interesting is that the artist, Adrian, came up with the idea that, well, if he's holding a magnifying glass in the corner, and the title is Queer Frankenstein, I can turn that O into a Q and make that part of the title treatment of the page, which I thought was very clever, and I think it works out just beautifully. I think it's a fantastic likeness of Mark Gatiss, and we're just really, we're so proud of this spread because it looks so beautiful, and we're really proud to have Mark Gatiss give us this great essay for the magazine. This piece is by David Brooks, aka Brooks, I guess is how you pronounce it, is how he signs it, B-R-U-X, a very, very famous artist now in the field of horror. You see his work all the time. We had actually already assigned most of the artwork for the magazine, and he contributed this fabulous piece of Michael Sarazan as the creature, and we didn't really know where we were going to put it, and I'm like, ah, it's so great, we got to find a place. So we did find a place to squeeze it in on the contents page right there. It's tiny, but at least it's there. I had to get it into the issue, so I'm glad we were able to do it. He actually painted this on computer, so there is not an actual, tangible piece of artwork, so what you're seeing here is a blow-up print. For the inside back cover of the issue, we have this piece of artwork by Paul Watts, and you'll see it right here in our gallery. He actually painted elements of it, but then combined those elements in the computer, so the actual full piece of art only exists digitally. So this is actually just a print from the disc that he gave us, but it's absolutely beautiful piece depicting the Arctic climax and the batteries, and Sarazan is the creature on the ship during the storm. It just represents all kinds of elements. There's even Polidori hanging on the mast there, and I just, I love it. I think what Paul did for us was fantastic. The great Mark Maddox, who has won a couple of Rondo Awards for Artist of the Year. He is just a masterful artist who's done many covers of magazines. We, Frankenstein The True Story is one of his favorite films of all time, as it is for me too, and he had been bugging the editor of Little Shop of Horrors to cover the film, because he wanted to paint a cover. We decided, however, that we wanted to do a big, huge mural and have a three-page wraparound foldout, which was going to take him a long time to paint. But we needed a preliminary cover for the distributor and for advertisers with early deadlines, so Mark said, well, I'll just do a quick portrait and give it to you guys to use as sort of a placeholder until I can do the main artwork. And this masterpiece is what he sort of whipped off in a couple of days on his computer, and it's just absolutely brilliant. I absolutely love it. And I wish we could have also used this in the magazine. I actually, it did sneak it in there, a tiny little black and white version of it, but you'll see it in some ads and magazines in color. So, but this is the real deal. It's just a, it was only created in computer, so this is only a print, but I think it's gorgeous. This is a print of the original poster to Frankenstein the True Story when it was released theatrically in Mexico. This is an original one sheet to the theatrical release of Frankenstein the True Story in Spain. And this is a set of 12 color lobby cards from the theatrical release in Spain. And this particular card here shows you much more gore because he, the monster is holding the head of Prima, the severed head, and you actually see the entrails coming out of the neck and everything that was framed out of the broadcast in America. There's been almost no merchandising of anything on Frankenstein the True Story, but when I saw that there was a model kit, I was so excited. And I ordered this immediately from Model Prisoners, and that's the company that Russ Rainey owns and runs. And he got a wonderful sculptor named Joe Simon to sculpt this incredible figure of Michael Sarazan as the creature. And I immediately sent this to Michael Reagan, who's with us today, to do the buildup and the painting of it, and the result is what you see right back here. Michael Reagan is a professional finisher of model kits and painter of them, and he did this amazing job that you see right here. But I very proudly display at my home when it's not on loan to creature features. So, Michael, tell us, were you familiar with this film? Was this something that you knew ahead of time? Well, I actually saw the film when it came out on television. And I caught it rerun a few years ago, but I didn't think it got enough attention that it deserved. And when you were kind enough to offer the commission to me, I was very surprised at the quality of the casting, and the model was almost one piece, which was amazing. So it was a real pleasure to work on, and I was very hopeful that you liked the results that you were getting. But when I did the research on him, it kind of brought back the memories of seeing the film, and it was maybe you want to see it again, actually. That's good. That's good. Well, you did a magnificent job. I mean, the likeness and everything is just brilliantly painted and finished. I couldn't be happier. And now I'm using Michael all the time for other stuff. Well, great. Well, I'm so glad that you were able to come all the way from San Francisco to creature features for the event today and I'm glad we got a chance to talk about this with the guy who actually painted it, so it's fabulous. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks so much, Michael. And there you have it. That concludes this edition of Little Shop of Horrors, Art Gallery at Creature Features, this time this chapter on Frankenstein, The True Story.